HN Explorer

Simple.com closed my $52k bank account without warning

69 points by pmarreck ↗ HN
They claim I violated their "personal use only" policy, which I presumably did by paying contractors to work on my house (this is only a guess, they have not been clear on exactly why). But that doesn't mean it's excusable to leave me in limbo for almost a week without access to my money (and quite a bit of it) while I need to pay people I'm employing. I've done absolutely nothing wrong nor illegal. Their customer support has been useless.

I don't know what recourse I have anymore short of waging social media war. Please retweet if you sympathize, thanks in advance: https://twitter.com/pmarreck/status/739994477339758592

21 comments

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[dead] infinii
You're saying that they closed your account but kept your money??

"pay people I'm employing". You may want to look up the definition of "personal use only".

sintaxi
Can't they deny service without holding funds?
stuartleigh
He says he's paying contractors who are working on his house. You wouldn't consider that "personal use"?
angry-hacker
How else could he use the service anyway? What is non personal use of your own money?! Serious question, I don't understand.
beardicus
They don't want you using it for your business accounts.
yetanotheracc
Not sure what your problem is. Personal use might include commuting to work, clothes for work, landlord referencing fees, overdraft fees, perhaps some basic food.
aaron695
> landlord referencing fees

How the hell is money spent on contracting a house to live in (contracting a person to reference you specifically) different to contracting a person to build a house to live in?

lox
Unless you are going to link to an actual definition, this is rude and worse, incorrect. The word "employ" is yours, not the OPs. Paying someone to work on your house doesn't violate personal use, much like paying a house cleaner or a repair person doesn't.

The OP talks about Bitcoin in their twitter bio, I wonder if the closure was related to that? I've had Australian banks close my account for Bitcoin transactions.

smeyer
>The word "employ" is yours, not the OPs

As of writing, "pay people I'm employing" is a direct quote from the OP. I'm not weighing in on whether or not this should count as personal use, but I think you missed it in the original post.

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j15t
Just out of interest, what was the outcome when your accounts were closed because of Bitcoin? Did you lose any funds?
lox
Nope, funds were returned. Bank "made a business decision" to close account and decline any future accounts of mine with them.
yetanotheracc
Exactly. It is easy not to read the agreement, general terms of use, fee schedule, terms of use for your particular account or monthly revisions of these documents and then complain. How about you respect the rules for once, OP?
rando444
He may have chose poor wording there, but do you honestly think he had the people working on his house fill out w-4 tax forms and employs them under himself?

Paying people for a service does not make you a business.

Have you ever paid someone to cut your grass or detail your car? Would you consider those people employees?

No, of course not.

tedmiston
Have you tried emailing the CEO directly?
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ksherlock
File a complaint with your state attorney general (and/or whatever state they are in). That takes a few months to get a result but a AG staffer will forward it to them (but on scary AG letterhead).

Also http://www.consumerfinance.gov

codeonfire
This is why paper checks are still useful. I had problems with Citibank who in the 2008 crisis kept doing things like resetting my pin, mailing my card to the wrong address, assigning the pin to the wrong account, etc. Then they told me I had to visit a branch in another state, four hundred miles away to withdraw. I just wrote a check for cash and deposited it in another bank.
cloudjacker
JUST USE B-

oh he already is using bitcoin